I'm Back and Gons is Gone

Just got back from vacation last night and am working my way through any interesting Foreign Service news I may have missed while I was gone (dial-up access does not make for easy web searching, so I didn't bother trying).

This morning I learned that our "friend" Gons Nachman was sentenced for his sexual encounters with children while representing our country overseas in the foreign service. I'm pleased with the outcome. You can read the whole story here, but I have quoted some of it below:

Ex-US diplomat gets 20 years for child porn
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - An ex-U.S. diplomat who admitted taping his sexual encounters with teenage girls while stationed in Brazil and the Congo was sentenced Friday to 20 years, the maximum possible prison term.

Gons G. Nachman, 42, had sought leniency, claiming among other things that cultural differences in those countries made sex with teenage girls more acceptable.

But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee took the unusual step of imposing consecutive 10-year terms for the two counts on which Nachman was convicted.

"I reject out of hand completely the idea that I should take into account cultural differences," Lee said. He said even if such differences exist, Nachman was answerable to U.S. standards and U.S. law while working as a diplomat on embassy grounds.

Nachman pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing child pornography after admitting he videotaped his sexual encounters while working as a consular officer. He also pleaded guilty to misuse of a diplomatic passport.

The case also included allegations that he pressured attractive female Brazilian visa applicants for sex, though he was not charged with that.

Nachman, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the U.S. from Costa Rica when he was 17, admitted that he recorded his sexual encounters with a 17-year-old girl in 2004 and a 14-year-old girl in 2005 while stationed in Kinshasa. One of the tapes was labeled "Congo 2004 Sexual Adventures."

He also admitted recording his sex acts with a 16-year-old Brazilian girl while stationed in Rio de Janeiro in 2006.

[...]

Nachman wept after hearing the sentence. His attorneys had suggested the six months he has already spent in prison would be sufficient.

In court, Nachman apologized to his victims and the U.S. Foreign Service.

"I've had this self-centered streak that has caused me to be where I am," he said.

His apology stood in contrast to letters he wrote after his guilty plea to the Foreign Service director seeking intervention on his behalf. He said he was unfairly targeted because he had been active in the nudist community and threatened to take the story about the "injustice" of his case to the international press.

[...]

Embarrassed by Nachman

Foreign Circus Life shares my sentiments on Gons Nachman. FCL writes:

Ashamed that Nachman is So Shameless

[...]

Nachman is a disgrace, one who makes every Foreign Service Officer sick because of his misuse of his office, and now he is trying to make the argument that he so immersed himself in the culture of the Congo that he didn't think it was wrong to have sex with young girls? I'm virtually speechless at the arrogance and idiocy of this pitiful attempt to mitigate his crimes. Like so many others in the Foreign Service, I hope he gets the 20 years the prosecution is seeking.

You can read her entire post here.

TSB on Gons Nachman to the Judge: In My Mind, I'm Only a Little Bit Guilty

The Skeptical Bureaucrat has been following the case of Gons Nachman for some time now. Nachman, you might have heard, is a former Foreign Service Officer who has been charged with a variety of crimes, including having sex with underage girls during his postings to Brazil and the Congo, as well as with pressuring visa applicants to have sex with him.

I have avoided covering this issue, mainly, in all honestly, because I am embarrassed that this man was in the FS. But his latest, which TSB covers very well below, is just beyond belief. To suggest that we, as diplomats, should be allowed to take advantage of children while overseas because of some perceived cultural difference (girls there age faster, he argues, so it isn't like having sex with children) is just offensive, and, for our service as diplomats, beyond the point. We can't smoke pot in Amsterdam either.

"Gons Nachman to the Judge: In My Mind, I'm Only a Little Bit Guilty

Damn! I was so looking forward to seeing Gons Nachman get sentenced tomorrow at the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria. But now he's gotten a last-minute postponement. According to today's AP story:

"An ex-diplomat [Gons G. Nachman] convicted of having sex with teenage girls in the Congo and Brazil and taping the encounters is asking a judge for leniency, claiming that cultural differences in those countries make sex with girls more acceptable.

Gons is the former INS Asylum Officer and State Department Vice Consul whose legal troubles I've been following for months (see here, here, here, here, and finally, here).

The judge has agreed to postpone sentencing until August 22, so that a "noted forensic psychologist" can probe Nachman's psyche as part of a defense ploy to show that Nachman became so highly attuned to Congolese cultural norms while serving as a U.S. Embassy political officer in Kinshasa that he came to believe it was only slightly improper to have sex with 14 year-old girls. And, if you buy that premise, then he shouldn't be punished as harshly as if he'd had sex with 14 year-olds in more Puritanical countries. Seriously. That's his story, a cultural subjectivist interpretation of statutory rape laws: your Honor, having adopted the values of my exotic surroundings, I did not regard those particular 14 year-old girls as deserving of the protection afforded them by U.S. law, and I ask that you respect my cultural beliefs.

But Gons isn't betting everything on this novel legal theory. According to the AP story, he also wrote a jailhouse letter to the Director of the U.S. Foreign Service in an apparent attempt to lay the groundwork for an appeal of his conviction.

"Another odd twist is Nachman's prominence in the nudist community: In the 1990s, when attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, Nachman led several public demonstrations advocating nudity. Nachman now contends that he was targeted for investigation in part because of his well-known affinity for the nudist lifestyle.

In his letter to the Foreign Service director, Nachman says investigators knew of his interest in nudism and illegally searched his apartment with the notion of finding images that, taken out of context, could be used against him.

Nachman says in the letter that he disclosed his activism and lifestyle to the Foreign Service and had no problems receiving a security clearance. State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson declined to comment directly on whether an individual's advocacy for public nudity would be a factor in the State Department's hiring process."

Now I'll have to wait another five weeks for the next installment of the Gons Nachman saga."

You can read all of TSB's post and the subsequent comments here.